


Battle Born

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Series: Soldier's Songs [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky has a new life, M/M, Not CA:TWS compliant, Past Abuse, Past Brainwashing, Past Torture, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Snapshots in Steve and Bucky's lives, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Use Your Words, Winter Soldier happened, from a distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-21 18:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3702423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of oneshots based on the album Battle Born by The Killers. All Bucky-centric/Bucky POV, some Bucky/Steve. More details as the fic continues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Here With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After escaping Red Room, Bucky Barnes has managed to build something resembling a life for himself, but the memory of Captain America, rather than fading away, is becoming something that he has to live with every day.

There was a lot to be happy about these days, and Bucky worked to take joy in the little things. He didn't go by Bucky these days, it didn't really feel right, but he'd been able to put enough of the pieces together to know who he had once been before Red Room had gotten their claws into him. Still, if there was one thing recovering from decades of torture and abuse had taught him, it was that the little things were the most important. 

And so he found an apartment, and he held down a job (more or less), albeit just one doing odd jobs. There were always places that needed handy men around, and the attraction of being able to pay cash under the table in exchange for reliable labour had been enough for him to land a place rent free.

As the days went by and the seasons changed, more and more of his memories came back. They weren't always in ways or places he could control. That was one of the problems with coming back to live in New York. He didn't really want to go anywhere else but walking around Brooklyn gave him flashbacks and Steve was... well, everywhere, these days. He didn't react so violently anymore. That was something, he hated the idea of assaulting some innocent bystander when Captain America came on TV for some stupid interview or there was footage of the Avengers in some other fight. 

It wasn't triggering so much these days as it was painful. He didn't have a life as Bucky Barnes. Bucky Barnes was dead, and bringing him back would be unfair to say the least. He couldn't be what Steve wanted or needed now, and, well, all things considered avoiding Natasha seemed like the safest thing to do. 

So instead he spent his days watching clips on youtube. Not so much the interviews, more the fights, spending time at home just watching over and over. It hurt, but it didn't break him, not anymore, and he found a sort of comfort in noting that Steve was still a big dumb self sacrificing idiot and seventy years in the deep freeze had evidently done absolutely nothing to change that. Natasha didn't tend to be in sight of the cameras but sometimes when she was, or when he could spot her out of the main sightline, he could see her doing things he remembered teaching her. His memory was a little foggy on that score though, he couldn't always remember for sure whether he had taught her or she had taught him, but he remembered, and he was proud. There was no way he couldn't be proud, regardless of what else had passed between them. 

And Captain America did signings and made publicity appearances along with the rest of the team and sometimes it was all Bucky could do to resist the urge to join the end of the line with his hair in a ponytail and a baseball cap pulled down, but it wasn't worth the risk so he just sat with his memories. 

It wasn't hard to buy posters or wallpapers or merchandise generally, but Bucky didn't want to. That was for distant people, people who didn't know them really, people who didn't understand. And he did understand. He just didn't have the strength to go back there. He had spent enough time living the lies constructed by other people and no matter how much he loved Steve, it wasn't worth going back to living a lie. 

He remembered when they'd met, two scrappy kids on the streets of Brooklyn, one twice the size of the other, and the other with a death wish. It wasn't exactly a death wish, of course, but that was the effect of it whichever way you tried to spin it. 

He'd been a teenager when he first realised he was lost in the fire in those eyes and the cocky smirk which was size 12 big on Steve's size 4 self. It wasn't about the physicality of it, it never really had been. For one thing it was illegal, not that that had ever stopped them doing anything else, and for another there was a distinct probability that any kind of over exertion would kill Steve. So instead it had been the sure and concrete knowledge that they would never be alone. It had been practised hands cleaning and bandaging wounds and it had been nights spent huddled together for warmth and Bucky going hungry to make sure Steve ate or had his meds. It had been being together, because that was what it was like to fall in love with somebody's spirit and know that it would never be the same again. 

It had almost killed him the day he'd got the draft, knowing he'd have to leave Steve behind, and knowing equally that the idiot would probably get himself killed trying to find some way to get out there. Of course, it hadn't worked out that way. He'd nearly gotten himself killed, several times, but Steve had made it so far through life on a run of dumb luck that Bucky somehow wasn't surprised that this had turned out any differently. 

Lazy summers bathing in the New York heat on Brooklyn roofs to stay out of the way of the worst of the bullies had been traded for mud and ran and bullets, but they were together again and Steve was as safe as he could ever be. Which wasn't very because he still did stupid things but at least he could take more than 6 steps without an asthma attack these days. Bucky decided to take what he could get. 

He could remember that now, remember hours under the study of Steve's eyes and his pencil scratching on the paper, in dingy apartments, in tents, on both sides of the world.

But that world they had lived in then was not the one they lived in now and in many ways it had changed for the better. But even though he wasn't the same man anymore, it still ached somewhere in his heart that they were apart. So he watched the news and he checked Steve was safe after every fight, and he avoided the lines at meet and greets and the one time he had been set to walk past the man grabbing a coffee outside a coffee shop with that damn sketch book again, he had broken ranks and positively sprinted in the other direction, cap clamped to his head. 

And he still refused to set the background on his phone but every night he still said goodnight to a man who couldn't hear him, wishing that they could be curled up together in the dark again, shivering against the cold. Everything had been better then, but maybe Steve was better now. Either way, no matter how much he wanted him there, Bucky knew that it could never again go back to the way it was. And he wasn't sure he wanted it to. At least he didn't have to check the alleyways any more, even if he couldn't stop. 

No. 

It was definitely better now than the way it had been. But then, the way it was is always rose coloured in our memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/killers/herewithme.html


	2. Flesh and Bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After trying to rebuild his life, pretending that he's just fine, and going to any lengths to avoid encountering his one-time friend, the man who was Bucky Barnes decides that it's time to step up and face the music.

The truth was that Bucky couldn't think of a single time in his life when he'd felt in control of what he was doing. He'd heard of the phrase 'a victim of circumstance', and, while he didn't like the idea of being a victim, he had the feeling that it described his life almost to a T.

Sometimes he found himself wondering, especially these days, what the other paths he could have gone down might have been like. What if he'd been born at a different time, or in a different place. Would he have done better in school? Maybe he'd have graduated properly and gone on to do something with himself instead of dropping out to support his family and then to support Steve. He could have gone to university or something, maybe studied science. He'd always loved science, and he'd had a knack for concepts which had at least stood him in good stead later on. He tried not to think too much about the link between basic geometry lessons and his ability to make kill shots. Of course, that was honed with practice and by the time Red Room had got their hands on him he hadn't been short of that, but he still knew that statistically speaking he was /good/. That didn't really make up for the whole losing an arm or the brainwashing, but it helped to know that he had killed cleanly, and that at least mathematically speaking he had been good at something. 

But instead he'd been swept along with the fates, held tight in the grip of the failing economy and a mother who scraped to put food on the table before she even thought about educational expenses. Whichever way he thought about it, he refused to consider it squandering his potential. That was unfair to his family and to Steve. He'd just made different choices. He'd adjusted to the circumstances he was dealt and he'd managed pretty well for the most part. If you didn't count being captured and then falling off a train, but you couldn't have everything. He'd dug in his heels, gritted his teeth and refused to be a self pitying victim. That wasn't his place. He was lucky to have a body and a mind that worked together, unlike Steve, and lucky too to be able to find work most of the time enough to keep body and soul together. 

Even after what Hydra had done he had refused to become a victim of his circumstance. He'd gritted his teeth and grabbed his rifle and fought on right alongside Captain America. He wasn't about to let some scientist with an unhealthy obsession with tentacles chain him down and tell him what he could and couldn't be. Of course, it wasn't really that simple, but decades of Steve's influence meant that Bucky wasn't about to roll over and just give up. They might not have been brothers in blood, but he'd known right from the start that he and Steve were cut from the same cloth even if they showed it differently. 

And he'd fought back.

And he'd kept on fighting even after Red Room had taken him and begun to transform him into a pawn. He worked out how much independence he could get away with before they would wipe him again, knowing they needed to keep sessions to a minimum because they wouldn't want to waste such a "valuable asset". Steve had refused to back down from a fight but now Steve wasn't here and while Bucky had had to be the voice of reason while they were together, the voice of reason when he was in charge of other men's lives, when he was alone he wouldn't back down because, for one thing, he had something to get back to. 

And then he'd gotten out and the world had changed and Steve wasn't a part of it anymore and even the infrastructure and the world he had known as part of Red Room were fading and he had to start a whole new life now that everything else had decayed around him. If he had to pinpoint a time when he had been most tempted to give it up entirely, that would have been it. It would have been the day he realised he had nothing, and barely even the remnants of a name to go on, and that he had to start from scratch.

America had been the obvious place. He had an affinity with it and even though nowhere was really home any more he knew that it had been for most of his life when he'd been a thinking, feeling, functioning human being. Besides, for someone with nothing at all, the land of opportunity was the obvious place to start. 

The day that he had seen Steve again on TV was one that Bucky would remember for the rest of his days. It was impossible to forget because it had shaken his whole world to its foundations again and his first instinct was to grab his coat and go and find him again because the fairytale ending they had always promised each other was right there for the taking... but his arm was gone and he wasn't the man Steve would remember. He had decayed just like everything else around them, and while for a while he had believed that he was made of sterner stuff than flesh and bone like the soldier he had once been, the metal that had replaced it wasn't much stronger. 

And so he watched, and he waited, and he tried not to roll his eyes when he realised that Steve was just as self sacrificing and dumb and frustrating as he had ever been. And no matter how much he wanted to reach out, he hadn't because the fear of seeing the disgust in the eyes of the one person, the one idea who had kept him going through everything he'd faced was too much.

But things change and people change and for those who don't change in the same way as other people it's very easy to get tired of watching the world fall apart. Good things don't last, and bad things have a habit of tainting and hanging on much longer than they're welcome. 

Bucky didn't know how long he had left. The 'enhancements', if that's what you wanted to call them, weren't exactly the best quality or the most reliable and while he was aging slowly he was still aging. The effects of the serum could fade and then he'd be back to mortal, or they might linger on in his blood for decades to come. He didn't know how long, all he knew was that he was tired, and that denying himself the one thing, the one person in the world that might understand, that might make it better, that might undo any of the things he had done for reasons he had no control over, was stupid on the same level as Steve. And he took pride in never letting himself be reduced to that.

So he took a shower, and he dressed in his usual dark clothes with a cap pulled down over tied back hair and long sleeves to hide the arm and he headed to the tower. He was tired of the darkness, and Steve had always been a ray of sunshine no matter where they were. It was worth a shot.

After all, underneath the star-spangled costume, Captain America was just as much flesh and bone as he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/killers/fleshandbone.html


	3. Deadlines and Commitments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Bucky realises what it's like to have a home.

Living in the tower was hard to get used to. It probably would have been hard to get used to even if he wasn't coming off of years on the run, and years of abuse before that. He still wasn't quite ready to think about that. But he could understand why Steve had been so keen on moving into the tower, and then on getting Bucky to move in too. 

He hadn't really known what to expect. Sure, he'd been watching them for months, but it hadn't really told him a whole lot. 

At first glance the inhabitants of what was now commonly known as Avengers tower were a disparate bunch who superficially had nothing in common. With the obvious exceptions being Natasha and Clint, but even they were bonded simply by being work colleagues. He knew Natasha, he had memories of her and the child she had once been and the young woman she had become. He could see that young woman in her now but bolder, more... real. It was nice to know that she had found something of the life he had always felt she deserved. She answered to her name now, and even diminuitives in English too, and it seemed to him that every time she did she became a little more real. 

She had been a ghost once, like he was. 

Clint still bore the scars of what had happened before New York, and the childhood before that. It hadn't been hard to find out more about the sniper who didn't use a gun. It had been pulled apart in the papers and analysed, besides which Bucky had contacts to go to for the real information. It was impossible to be on the run for years without building up a network of people who traded in what was valuable. As a rule, information or misinformation was at the top of the list. 

For an illiterate ex carnie from Iowa he seemed to be surprisingly comfortable in the upper echelons of New York City's most luxurious building. 

Then there was the scientist who was uncomfortable in his own skin. Bucky knew how he felt, knew when he saw him. He hadn't understood why until he'd been able to see the footage in full. The man was a monster, and yet here he was and they treated him without hesitation as a friend. He was part of the team, and he was calming, he was settling, he was adjusting. It was nice to see, it gave Bucky hope that perhaps one day he might find somewhere he could do the same. 

It was a hell of a team of lost souls. He'd been impressed by how well they'd functioned as a team at all, actually. Even the Howlies hadn't gelled quite that fast. Well, they hadn't originally. Breaking out of a Hydra compound together had been a good exercise in team bonding. 

Nobody was arguably more lost or further from home than the god, or demigod, or whatever he was. Bucky heard he was called Thor. He seemed oddly confident in his own identity for someone far from home who had been summoned to fight his own brother but now that purpose was gone... it was like watching himself in a mirror, seeing someone who was learning a world they had never known before. 

Bucky had seen a woman visit and the two of them were obviously close but having a love like that didn't always make up for everything you had lost en route to getting it. 

Tony Stark was a mystery. If you bought the superficial publicity then he had no right to be counted among the lost but it only took one chance look into unguarded eyes, or an unsleeping guardian on a bad night to see how badly hurt he was.

Bucky felt some nagging guilt for that in a way. He had been partially responsible, he supposed. He was pretty sure that Howard and Maria Stark's blood was on his skin but from what he'd heard since he wasn't sure it hadn't been an indirect mercy to the boy. At least Tony didn't seem to look upon it as a defining experience. That was perhaps something in and of itself. An orphan who either refused to define themselves by the loss of their parents, or someone who simply wasn't all that affected by it. Bucky sometimes thought to himself that to have mattered they probably would have had to be parents in the first place. Sometimes he got the impression that that hadn't really been the case. 

It was impossible to deny, though, that not only was this a team of lost souls, or at the very least, wandering souls. Still, here they were, and day by day they spent more time in each others' company and they laughed and joked... 

Clint and Natasha had moved back into SHIELD for a while to be with Phil. Bucky had thought that would be the end of the team. He hoped Steve stayed though, he'd seen the apartment in Brooklyn. He hoped Steve stayed at the tower. 

Bruce had left again, despite Tony's pleas, and Thor had gone back to Asgard. 

That had left Steve and Tony, and it seemed for a while like the Avengers had disbanded. Both Steve and Tony seemed to be a little better off for the company though, and Bucky was glad of that. Steve had never done well on his own. After all, when Bucky had taken his eye off him he'd suddenly quadrupled in size and gained the ability to punch people without collapsing or breaking any of his own bones. 

Then Clint and Natasha moved back in, with Phil this time. 

Then Bruce came back, settling into a suite of rooms that had been prepared for him and getting his research back up and runnign with some help from Tony's seemingly bottomless wells of cash. 

Thor had landed one day without any introduction and been able to walk into a movie night, flop down on an oversized pillow and commandeer the popcorn bowl, looking rather like an oversized blond hamster. 

Bucky wasn't sure what to make of this. He hadn't expected it. And then he realised that this must be a place that felt safe, a place they called home. It had been an easy solution after the Battle of New York for them to all lick their wounds in the same place in case the Chitauri came back. Besides, some of them didn't have a place and some of them didn't have a safe place. That was why they had all moved into the tower. It had been temporary... only now it wasn't. And Bucky was starting to remember how it felt to have a home like that.

He couldn't really remember what it felt like to have family, but sometimes, watching them, flashes of it came back and he wished he could join them. 

It had come as a surprise when, several weeks later when he had finally given up and handed himself in, Tony had done nothing more than shrug. 

"There's a place for you, you know? Where you can stay. There's always space, and you don't need to like... call or whatever. Just turn up. You don't even have to move in, just if you need to crash. It doesn't have to be a big commitment, there's not a deadline, just... I want you to know it's there if you need it. Same way it is for the rest of them."

And Bucky had finally understood why they had all come back; and why they had chosen to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.letssingit.com/the-killers-lyrics-deadlines-and-commitments-m5trkl4


	4. Be Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set some time after Bucky moved in.

These days their roles seemed to have been reversed. 

Back in the thirties it had been Steve who stayed at home most of the time. Bucky sometimes wished it could have been all day but Steve would never have stood for that. It chafed at him anyway when he couldn't go out, and that always made it worse. Unless there were feet of snow on the ground and it was all but impossible to get out of the building, Steve spent most of his time pacing like a caged animal, which wore him out until he had to lie down for a little. It frustrated him, and Bucky knew that better than anyone, but he had more respect for Steve than he would ever be able to articulate because no matter how bad Steve felt, no matter how suffocated and trapped in his own skin let alone the four crappy walls of the apartment, he never took it out on anyone else. 

At least, not technically speaking. Bucky did find himself wondering whether that was what fuelled all the fights Steve found himself in. It was his unshakeable morality and sense of justice that got him into them, but the dogged determination had to be the only way of getting out any of that frustration. In some ways frustration was worse than anger because anger tended to burn bright and then die down but frustration smouldered constantly and ate away at a person... but it never ate away at Steve. He may have been dissatisfied with the hand fate had dealt him but he was always stoic and so Bucky tried to do the same and it went unsaid that they both knew Steve probably wasn't going to see thirty. 

Steve was always Steve, the guy who was bigger than his body seemed to realise, the guy who would move mountains with his determination if his lungs didn't get in the way and sometimes Bucky hated that some force somewhere had seen fit to put those limits on that spirit.

That being said he was the only one who ever got to see the other side of it, the only one who came back to the small figure curled up in bed where he'd coughed himself almost to unconsciousness. 

No matter what time it was that he was getting back in from work on those days, the first thing Bucky always did was cross to the bed, run his fingers through Steve's hair and spend an hour or so wrapped around him, warming up the body that was always too thin and would never have the chance to get healthier, trying to soothe the muscles that burned and ached from the constant cough. 

He did whatever he had to for food, for medicine and he never let Steve know how bad it got because it was important that he was allowed to believe in the good side of human nature, no matter how often Bucky saw the bad. Steve had enough on his plate already and Bucky was determined to protect him from as much as he could. After all. That was what you did when you loved someone. 

Then Bucky went off to war and despite everything Steve had tried, he wasn't following. Until he was, of course, because when you knew that you weren't going to live that long anyway, the prospect of gaining or losing everything including your life wasn't really that terrifying.

Bucky had tried to put a brave face on it when he shipped out, but Steve didn't know it was the draft and Bucky was scared shitless to go because he knew that when he came back, there was a good chance that what he was leaving behind wouldn't be there anymore. But he covered it with a lopsided smile, cracking stupid jokes right up until the end because that was what Steve deserved, and the two of them teased and needled each other like they always did, and then it was Steve who was breaking into that Hydra base looking like a patriotic turtle with no back up and no strategy and Bucky was so scared he could hardly breathe while the world span and dark thoughts ate at the corners of his mind.

Looking back now that had been when the tables had really turned. And now it was Bucky lying on the bed waiting for Steve to return, and Steve who was out slaving away, bringing home the bacon, or at least raising public approval ratings in the wake of the latest disaster.

Bucky had stayed clear of that one. He was nominally on the team these days but he didn't answer every call out. Mainly because he couldn't face it every day. He knew when the situation was bad enough that they needed back up with a slightly looser view on morals than some of the team. Because even after everything they'd been through, even after war and fire and blood and ice, Steve was still Steve, head held as high and unflinching as ever and he didn't compromise. He never compromised when right and wrong were on the line and he still didn't care about whether he lived or died because it had never been a habit he'd had to get into. It was hard to find value in something you knew could be snatched away from you any second. 

Steve had survived so much. He'd survived waking up when Bucky had never gone to sleep and realising that everything and everyone he knew was gone. He'd stayed as straight and true as ever and for some reason that made Bucky fall even more in love with him even as he rolled his eyes. He was starting to think there was absolutely nothing in the world that would stop Steve being Steve, and after everything he'd done and seen and the weary ache that had settled in his bones and wouldn't fade despite everything the serum was meant to heal, he was glad that their roles had finally been reversed. 

The bed was comfy and the late afternoon sun was streaming in, warming him where he lay, reading a book held in the hand that never got tired and shading his eyes. 

And Steve came in and Bucky looked up and saw him painted gold, and his face brightened in a slow, honest smile as he shifted up for a welcome home kiss. 

Even in the darkest times, Steve had always been the sun for him, and while the world was lighter these days, still nothing shined quite as bright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been written for over a year but evidently since I didn't have an order planned I figured I'd slot it in when I worked out where it would go. Actually I've decided I'm going to get them written and posted and then sort out the order afterwards. 
> 
> http://www.letssingit.com/the-killers-lyrics-be-still-md8xzrr


	5. The Way It Was

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve's POV, and very sad!

It was the way he'd changed that was the hardest thing for Steve to deal with. Of course, he was still Bucky. That was what Steve had to keep telling himself. Because he owed Bucky things, he'd made promises that he would keep no matter what. Bucky had given him so much it was the least he could do. But sometimes it was so, so hard to remember that the man who slept beside him now was Bucky. 

There were little things that he remembered, but sometimes even those weren't enough. It was the way his lips quirked when he smiled, the way he arched one eyebrow when he thought Steve was being an idiot, the way he laughed. Other mannerisms too, like when he smoked. But sometimes it was like watching an actor who didn't quite get it right. Even the walk was different. Steve hadn't quite understood before why it was that people said the walk was the most distinctive feature of a person. But this man didn't walk like Bucky. He didn't strut like the Winter Soldier either, in fact, there was a lack of purpose in his movements altogether. But he didn't move like Bucky. 

There were flashes of recognition in his eyes and sometimes he told stories or remembered snatches of song or things that had made Steve happy once upon a time. 

Steve appreciated those moments more than anything, even when they hurt. They were a sign of recovery. 

He'd been warned right at the beginning that after an experience like that a person would be changed, that even if he stabilised, Steve wouldn't be getting his Bucky back. He'd agreed. He'd said he understood. He had understood. After all, it was the same thing with Peggy, wasn't it? She was there but it was her and not her at the same time. She remembered and she didn't remember. But her fundamental Peggyness was unchanged and even if she regressed to the point where she forgot who he was entirely, he wouldn't stop going. Because he owed her that, because once upon a time she had been Peggy. 

He'd been wrong to think it was the same thing with Bucky. It wasn't. While Peggy's fundamental Peggyness was still there underneath it all, Bucky had been stripped down to the bare bones so often there was nothing there at all. There were fragments possibly, that had been left in cracks too deep to scour, and Bruce had a theory that despite the repetitive wipes and brain injuries, the knock off version of the serum running in his veins would gradually heal the brain injury too. It was one idea behind the way he was remembering, but that could simply be explained by the change in environment. Things weren't so traumatic any more. With help, the victims of a lot of situations could regain some aspects of their lives before. But none of the previous research had been on anyone as damaged as Bucky. 

So he both was and wasn't Bucky, but as far as Steve was concerned, even if he would never be Bucky again, he had been Bucky once and that was reason enough for Steve to stick by him. After all, Steve was painfully aware that if it hadn't been for Bucky, he would never have made it to adolescence, let alone adulthood. Bucky had been there for him, through thick and thin, till the end of the line, with no questions asked, when nobody else had been willing to stand with him. Bucky had laid down his life for the same causes Steve had always championed, even if he hadn't meant to. Nobody had exactly gone into that war meaning to lose their life, but even if his choice had been less... enthusiastic than Steve's, it was a choice and a sacrifice that he had made.

That didn't mean that there weren't days when Steve wished it could just go back to the way it had been before. "The way it is is never the way it was", Peg had told him once. She was right. She probably wouldn't even remember saying it now, but she was right. Sometimes, well, quite a lot of the time really, he hated that she was right. 

He could remember everything. Of course, for him there hadn't been seventy years of stuff in the middle to overwrite it, and time hadn't passed to fade anything. He was pretty sure that for most people seventy years would dull memories anyway, even without their mind being washed out and scrubbed clean multiple times. 

But sometimes he was so lonely he felt like he was drowning. 

It wasn't the first time he'd felt that way. A lot of how things had been when he'd first woken up had felt like that, but he'd managed to tread water long enough to find an anchor of a team and build something resembling a life. And then Bucky had come back and it had all come crashing down. Of course, he couldn't blame him. He was glad Bucky had come back. He wasn't alone any more except for all the ways in which he was more alone than ever. Still, he couldn't die, and it had always been easier to go on with Bucky by his side. Bucky was the one who had always made everything all right, until suddenly he hadn't been there any more and Steve had been sure that nothign would ever be all right ever again. 

It was funny the things Bucky remembered. He could talk for hours about nights they'd spent at Coney Island, or heading out to watch the planes taking off and landing. He could remember the subway too, when it opened. He could remember food, and games in the alleys, and lessons from the nuns. But it was nights which had seemed to Steve like so many other nights which Bucky remembered more than anything. They were like shining beacons of memory, golden nights in a shadowy past. 

Steve had gotten very good at playing along. 

He was glad, so glad that Bucky had come back. He was glad to be able to pay back some of the infinite kindness Bucky had shown him over the years. He was pathetically grateful not to be alone anymore. And Bucky knew him, and Bucky remembered, at least some of the time. Bucky had remembered enough to seek him out, and that idea was something that Steve clung to fiercely when he looked up into eyes that showed no recognition at all. He hadn't believed dead eyes could be on a living person until some of the times he'd caught Bucky's gaze at the wrong moment. 

One of the things which had been knocked out of him a little in the face of war, in the face of death, in the face of rebirth, was his boundless optimism. It wasnt that he was a pessmist, far from it, but he was a little more realistic these days. And that was why, no matter how much he dreamed about the way it was, Steve was determined to make the best of the way it would be, no matter what. 

When he said till the end of the line, he meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.letssingit.com/the-killers-lyrics-the-way-it-was-c5gvdwp


	6. From Here On Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the most powerful choice of all is to do nothing

Even now he was part of the team (albeit an uneasy part) Bucky still found it difficult to adjust to the new world. He had been aware, he had grown with it, changed with it, learned from it... but even then. Things had changed all over again when he had finally decided to come forward. He had gone from scraping together pennies to live in a back room apartment to his own space in the biggest and most expensive building in the city with no bills to pay. Which was just as well since technically he didn't have any income. 

It was an interesting balance between the Soldier Natasha had known and the friend he had been to Steve for longer still, but every day it felt more like he was reaching the balance point, finding the weight of it like a throwing knife, settling into some sort of equilibrium identity. 

That didn't mean that there weren't bad days. 

They could be triggered by different things. It could be something on the news, it coule be feeling off kilter, it could be seeing a face. 

The thing about New York was that it was a big city with millions of people, but after surviving trauma there are still faces that stick with you, and some days he would see them. 

Those tended to be messy days. 

What those men had put him through was something he found beyond words. Natasha understood, at least some of it. Most of it. But not all. She hadn't been someone before in the same way he had and now, although she was learning, although she was gaining humanity and being frightened of what it might mean to lose that, to have it taken from her... it wasn't the same as the destruction of an entire identity, an entire life which had gone before. 

It had been fear and darkness and pain and screaming. So many different kinds of pain he'd never known about, secrets exposed, hands touching places they had never been destined to touch. Vivisection, time after time after time. And what made it worse was the way they had smiled through it, laughed sometimes... he had seen them lie, again and again. He had seen them act, seen them feign fear or regret to be allowed to continue their work. And it had been successful until everything had fallen and the world had changed. 

But the scum always floats to the surface and he should have known it was too good to think any of them had fallen with the dust of the wall and the old regime. There had been too many changes. It wasn't so acceptable to simply remove the troublesome elements anymore as it once had been. At least, not so clinically. And the Russian community in New York was substantial. It was only natural that they had come here, looking for a new land of opportunity. That, of course, did not make it any easier to be confronted with those memories. 

They would be tainted by what they had done, though. It wasn't always a secret who had been involved in which part of government work and their name would be tainted now the shadow of the leader's arm was passed. It wouldn't be so easy to integrate. Some were forgiven who were informers. It was more understandable, particularly if you had been threatened, but enough horror stories had leaked out in the latter decades of Soviet rule that the science section of the military did not have a good reputation. They had enjoyed their work, it was said, and after seeing what the Nazis had done when they had followed orders, seeing what had been done in Hitler's name by scientists who enjoyed their work... they were not trusted. 

Some had claimed ignorance, or feigned regret again, some had reintegrated... but he couldn't tell from simply seeing a face what had happened to them since. He wasn't scared of being recognised though. They could do nothing to him now, and rather than hunting them down, wanting them to see he had survived, wanting to put into their hearts the visceral fear he had inspired in those they had targeted him at... he left them alone. 

He had tried to explain it once to Natasha, who had been with him when he saw one of them, who had recognised him herself. 

"I shed enough blood. There's enough on my hands to last a thousand lifetimes. I might not have been the man I am now when I shed it, I might not have been in control at all. But they trained me to kill, they crafted me, moulded me, controlled my like a puppet on their strings, a robot made to follow their programming without imagination. I can think of no better demonstration of my free will than to refuse to do to them what they had me do to so many others. I am more, and I will always be more."

He shrugged and his smile was thin. 

"Killing them would be easy. They will have to live with the memories of what they did. Some of them enjoyed the work, but I do not believe it is possible to perpetrate acts like that and it not to put a tarnish on the soul. I do not know that I am a religious man but I am sure there is a place in hell for them where they will face their just rewards, and they will not be meted out by me. They saw me as an angel of death. If angel I was, I will not grant them that release and in time they will deal with the consequences. I'm not sure what fate awaits me. I hope to do enough good in the intervening time to make up for some of the acts I committed under their control. But for me... it strengthens my grip on this new mind. It feels like defiance every single time I live and let others live. You and I were not meant to be beings of life. But here we are. We are both fully and wholly alive. That to me is the sweetest revenge of all."

"I know I'm a monster, but not all monstrous creations are monsters in their heart. I feel like the creation of Doctor Frankenstein. I don't know if any of them were actually called that, but they created a monster and now I have my independence, and now... I can choose. And I choose peace, I choose life, and I choose no more killing. There would be no peace for me in that, only more blood and more dreams."

It wasn't easy to make that choice and he made it every day he saw another face, but he persisted. It had been a paradigm shift, a conscious choice of defiance, screamed with every fibre of his being. But it was worth it, to rise up, and to know that no matter how low they had brought him, he would rise higher than they could ever dream of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.letssingit.com/the-killers-lyrics-from-here-on-out-qwsb7hz


	7. A Matter Of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for: lack of communication, unhealthy coping mechanisms, references to past trauma (because Bucky) and disordered eating resulting from stress
> 
> When I said I'd be with you till the end of the line, I meant the you you used to be...
> 
> Steve struggles to cope with what happened to Bucky, but his coping methods leave Bucky feeling more adrift than ever.
> 
> Everything is so much simpler if you use your words.

Steve had changed since Bucky's arrival. Of course, that was to be expected. Anyone would be shaken by a ghost from their past appearing like that and this was far from a normal situation. Bucky was more of a ghost than anything else, after all. 

And Steve tried to be strong, tried to be casual, tried to be normal about it but that was so hard to do. He still went on missions with the team, he went to classes and sometimes he went out sketching. He went out with friends, both the team and SHIELD and people who weren't from either of those worlds. 

It had been great being able to see this life Steve had built for himself from the outside, but on the inside... it was starting to make Bucky feel sick. Because things had changed and there was only one factor which was linked to that change and it was him, and it itched at his skin and twisted in his gut. 

Steve had been happy before. And then Bucky had come back and now Steve wasn't happy anymore.

He still went out and did things but there was something about the smile that was brittle. He would joke and drink and laugh like he hadn't got a care in the world... but then it would end a little too quick, a little too harshly... a little too empty. Sometimes his gaze would settle on Bucky and it would be dark and unreadable and Bucky wished that he had never come. He wished he could disappear but he didn't think that would make Steve go back to the way he was and he just wished there was something he could do to undo his own existence. It seemed like the only way Steve wouldn't hurt. If he could undo his existence then they wouldn't have known each other in the first place and they wouldn't be in this position now and Bucky wouldn't be here... and Steve would be happy. Truth be told it wasn't the first time he wished there was a way to undo his existence but it had never been for someone else before. 

But he'd promised, all those years ago he'd promised that he was with Steve until the end of the line and it didn't seem right to give up on him now and part of him... part of him had hoped that maybe Steve felt the same way. And maybe he had towards Bucky but Bucky was painfully aware of just how much he wasn't Bucky anymore. Maybe that was where he'd gone wrong, maybe he should just try harder...

Except that he tried harder, trying to pretend he remembered everything, trying jokes and words he'd heard from old news clippings or barely remembered snatches and that just made Steve... it wasn't even a face. He couldn't call it pulling a face because it wasn't. It was like shutters had come down behind his eyes. He went blank. And that made Bucky panic even more because he didn't know what to do about someone going blank. He barely knew how to deal with himself but he could draw cues about his behaviour from other people. Except that Steve wasn't giving him any cues anymore. 

He was getting on okay with the others, he'd come to an uneasy peace with Stark and Natalya, and even the other sniper was okay. He had been unsure about the Doctor from the beginning but the man seemed friendly enough and there was a gentleness about the big blond which had been impossible to read from afar. They were... something. But they weren't anchors in the way that Steve was.

It was starting to make him sick, and he didn't want to be sick, but he felt like he was going crazy all the time. 

Steve wanted to get away from him. It was becoming more and more obvious. He didn't react, he shut down when Bucky tried to initiate anything, he went out more and more with different people. Steve wanted to get away from him, to... Bucky didn't know, to forget? And there was a part of him that said he should just leave except that he had nowhere to go if he left and the others seemed okay and this place was safe...

He hadn't seen Steve act like this before, not with him. 

The only other time he could think of was when they'd been together after they'd buried Steve's mother. 

Sure Steve had been fightier than usual. He'd been quieter too, had taken to drinking even though a sip of whisky had him laid out the way half a bottle would lay out a bigger man. But nobody was dead... Bucky was here, he was right here, with Steve again. It was like the opposite, surely? But Steve wasn't happy and the man who had been the Winter Soldier was starting to wonder if he had ever been Bucky at all. He'd known he wasn't now but he'd thought maybe there was enough left... except there wasn't, obviously there wasn't because Steve didn't want to look at him, didn't want to touch him, couldn't be in the same room as him...

And then Steve had come back one afternoon while Bucky had been in the bathroom, on his knees again, heaving up his guts as they twisted and he retched. He was almost used to this now. It wasn't even about the food. It was when the stress of it all got too much, when he knew he was wrong, when he knew he was hurting Steve by being here but he didn't have a choice... 

And Steve had frozen in place, staring at him like a statue and Bucky had felt the tears bubble up because it was worse than hatred to be looked at with that disdain and Steve had been confronted by the sight of the man he had once called his best friend looking like a wounded animal on the floor, even more so than when they had been reunited.

Something about that had flicked a switch inside him, and he had sighed and muttered but he had scooped Bucky up and put him on the bed and he had stroked Bucky's hair back and fetched him a glass of water and a bucket and Bucky had sat there and stared at him until he had finally managed to find the words to ask. 

"Why?"

Why, why are you doing this, why are you touching me, why are you acting like you care because you don't care, I know you don't care, you've shown me time and again that you don't care and I know I'm wrong, I'm all wrong, I'm doing this wrong, I'm broken and it's me that's wrong but I don't know how to be better please just tell me how to be better....

And Steve had tilted his head and frowned and looked at him, tilting Bucky's chin up to look at him. 

"What do you mean why?"

"I mean why are you doing this? You hate me, why are you..."

And Steve looked like he'd been punched in the gut. 

Bucky cowered. He'd got it wrong again. There had been consequences for that and now there were instincts that were hard to shake. 

"I don't- I don't hate you, Buck... I don't... why would you think that?"

"Because... you do hate me. I'm not Bucky and I shouldn't have come. You're a good person so you took me in but... ever since then you've been different... you've barely wanted to look at me or talk to me or touch me and you've been out all the time and I... it's me, I ruined it for you. You'd built a good life for yourself before I came along and ruined it for you."

And Steve swallowed, shaking slightly as he shook his head, once, twice, an awkward expression on his face. His voice was rough when he spoke, and Bucky was alert to every clue he had as to what was coming. 

"I don't... hate you. You didn't ruin anything." Steve took a deep breath, "I did, obviously, if anyone did... but you... you didn't. I'm sorry. I didn't realise I'd been... I'm sorry. That must have been awful for you. I didn't mean to make you feel like that. I didn't mean to... treat you like that. I didn't- You're... Bucky. I guess at least mostly. You're enough of Bucky that you're Bucky to me. I don't know that probably didn't make sense. But you were hurt and it wasn't your fault you were hurt but it's just... so... obvious, in some ways. And I couldn't... handle that and I obviously was handling it even wore than I thought because I didn't want to confront the fact that people had done that to my best friend. That they'd tortured you and experimented on you and used you for so long. That you'd been someone different. And I mean... to start with... I was alone. I thought I was alone and I did my mourning but it was always more complicated with you because I never really processed that grief anyway. I just... crashed a plane. I mean, it was wartime, people died. Death became less of a thing to remark on because people lost people every day and I... thought I'd lost you and I didn't want that. More than anything I didn't want that. And then I lost you, and then I lost you all over again when I woke up, and then I thought I'd found you only to realise that I'd lost you all over again because of what they did to you and everything that happened in between. You're not the Bucky I knew anymore and I'm not going to lie and tell you that you are, but time... time changes everyone. Nobody stays the same, no matter how much we want them to, not even in our memories... so you're Bucky now and that's enough for me. But I held on to the memories for so long that I guess they were just... getting away from me. And I'm sorry. I really am. You deserved... deserve... better than that. I never meant..."

Steve gulped and glanced away, lowering his head. 

"I never meant to make you sick..."

Bucky watched him, still wide eyed, still afraid... but slowly, instinctively, he reached out and took Steve's hand, squeezing it gently. 

When the blue eyes glanced back up to meet his they were brimming with tears, but there was a spark in them that Bucky had been thinking he would never see again.

"So... I'm sorry Buck... maybe we can try again huh? I mean... I'm with you till the end of the line. Wherever that is, I'm with you till the end of the line."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/killers/amatteroftime.html


	8. Runaways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He might not remember much, but Bucky remembers how he ended up with Steve, and why he stays.

He still didn't remember everything. He was starting to accept that he probably never would. Things faded with time anyway and that was leaving repeated brainwashing aside. Yes the serum healed things, it had even helped repair some of the damage that had been done to his mind but memory was a fickle thing and subjective at the best of times. It wasn't uncommon for memories to be at least false in part, that was why implanting them wasn't necessarily that difficult either. Sometimes he wasn't actually sure how much he really wanted to remember.

He'd lost a lot of the good times he'd had with Steve, a lot of the things that had once made Bucky Barnes who he was... but then, he'd also lost some of what the Red Room had done to him, and the things he'd done with them. He was starting to think that maybe it was a price he was willing to pay. That didn't stop him spending days at a time thinking, trying to remember. He'd long discovered that straining didn't help. It had at first, in the very earliest days when he'd been searching for an identity and a name that desperation had driven him onwards. Now though it was to the point where he had to let things come and understand that if they didn't, then they might never come again. It was almost like scraping the false bottom of a barrel. He knew there was more but the mechanism was beyond his understanding. 

Something that had come back to him though was the way they'd met. How he'd felt, getting mixed up with Steve almost ninety years ago. 

There had been a thrill. That was what was so hard to explain, and he couldn't really capture the feeling anymore, but he could remember it. Steve had a magnetism to him, a charisma... he still had it now, and it had blossomed since his retrieval from the ice. It had taken a while, maybe it just defrosted slower than the rest of him, but it had come back when he had a sense of purpose again. Bucky was fairly sure the two things were linked. The thing was... Steve wasn't charismatic the way Tony was charismatic. There was no denying that Tony was charismatic. People would follow him anywhere just to see what he'd do next. Of course, Tony was also a good man, but he wasn't like Steve. 

Steve was just good and pure and honest. It was almost like he radiated light. Not in some kind of virtuous way though. Steve... was an interesting combination of virtuous and rebellious. He would obey orders he felt were just, and he wasn't necessarily all that great at command. Bucky knew that most people disagreed on that front, but most people hadn't fought with him. 

When Steve had joined the army he had obeyed the orders he agreed with to fight a well delineated evil foe. None of the wars since had been so clearly defined and that was part of where the problems arose with the perception of the military that Steve struggled with. The fact was that even when he was in the army Steve hadn't obeyed orders he felt were wrong, which was how he had ended up breaking into a Hydra base wearing the flag and carrying something that was about as effective as a trash can lid. Bucky still had flashbacks to that just as much as the experimentation and they were always followed by a headache. But even before the army when he was just a kid from Brooklyn, Steve had still been obeying orders. They weren't issued by anyone in particular except possibly god or moral imperative, but there was a definite call to stand up to bullies, and that was what Steve had always done, unfailingly. And that had drawn Bucky in. 

There was nobody like Steve that he had ever met before. There was nobody, even in the forces with those bonds of camaraderie, who would put their life on the line so unquestioningly for a person or people that they didn't know. Steve didn't think twice about it. He did not like bullies. Part of that came from having been bullied but a lot of it came from the fact that to Steve it just was so wrong and unjust that it burned. 

There was a song he listened to sometimes that made him think of it, made him remember with something resembling wistfulness the twists and turns his life had taken when he met Steve Rogers. 

The song was about a girl and running away together and sure they started out on a beach and he'd met Steve in an alleyway, but it was a song about a beauty with blonde hair and blue eyes who took you away from the life you had and showed you something different, who rebelled against the accepted norm. And that had been Steve all over. 

He hadn't run away, not physically at least, but he'd spent less time with his mother and his sisters and more time patrolling the back streets with Steve, standing up to those who caused trouble because he couldn't let Steve do it on his own. He hadn't been planning to grow up and get a job and get married and settle down because suddenly there was this blond firecracker whose bark was bigger than his bite (so much bigger) but who wouldn't back down even when he was battered, bruised and bleeding. And that was something special. That was something Bucky couldn't walk away from even as the world changed around them. 

They'd made promises. They hadn't been wedding vows, they hadn't ever been intended to be, not really, because that kind of thing didn't happen, but they had been promises to be faithful and to stick with each other no matter what and Bucky was finding those promises to be so very necessary right now. They were something to hold onto. He'd always expected to be the strong one, physically at least, he'd always expected to be the one doing the supporting except that war had broken out and things had changed and somehow as nonagenarians they were physically unchanged from their twenties and Steve was being the strong one. It was hard, but there were the promises there, even when Steve had his rough days, his quiet days when he didn't talk to anyone, when he went out and stayed out or hid in the gym and punched until his knuckles were raw. And there was nothing more constant than Steve Rogers.

He'd seen the pictures from the old days. Steve sketched them sometimes and there were some in the exhibition in the Smithsonian and in Tony's Dad's private archives, and Steve had a little photo album which Peggy had given him. He could look at the pictures and see Steve in all his glory with the smile that had never changed even when he'd grown two feet, and that twinkle in his eyes that was somehow there even in black and white. But he could look at the dark man standing by Steve's shoulder and not recognise him. There was a smile there, a confidence even when there was grief, and there was a warmth that Bucky didn't think he'd ever be able to feel again. 

But Steve was the same and Steve was here and now and Bucky knew, even as his body ached at odd times because the memories of what it had endured were stronger, Bucky knew that if Steve asked him to, he would follow him anywhere. That was what it meant, till the end of the line, and even as a wreck of his former self... Bucky would be just as powerless to resist that spell as he ever had been. And maybe running away together in the future would hurt less, especially the the super serum and Bruce's medical attentions. Bucky's mother had never looked too kindly on him hanging around with Steve. It wasn't anything against Steve personally but she hadn't been all that keen on the boy who seemed to her to be responsible for Bucky regularly returning with grazed knuckles, black eyes and split lips. Bucky was pretty sure it was Steve's fault too, but... at the end of the day, that didn't change anything. Steve had changed his life once before and Bucky was absolutely one hundred percent certain that, given the chance, Captain Rogers would do it all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a happier one this time...
> 
> http://www.metrolyrics.com/runaways-lyrics-the-killers.html


	9. Battle Born

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes when you're lost in a nightmare you just need the right thing to bring you out of it. Unfortunately if nobody else knows that right thing you could be lost for a long time.

From a distance Steve had seemed to be pretty much normal. Of course, from a distance usually meant the media and although Steve didn't necessarily behave himself, he also knew how not to be honest, and most reporters were way too starstruck to be interviewing Captain America, a man who had literally returned from the grave, to look too closely. The thing was that Steve's new team didn't know him that well either. 

Having met them now, Bucky was pretty sure they would have figured it out eventually, but the problem was that Steve.... didn't deal with things well, and he didn't necessarily have enough time for them to figure it out. When Steve was having issues dealing with things he got quiet. Sometimes he drew more, but not always, and Bucky wasn't sure if he'd started drawing at all since he got out of the ice. Steve had never been all that good at processing his emotions. When he was younger they'd mainly been frustration and anger and Steve had dealt with those just fine by picking fights with people bigger than him. Sometimes he won, more often he lost but the injuries made the pain physical and something that could be acted upon rather than being knotted up inside him in ways he couldn't express. 

The thing was that on the outside Steve was still Steve, but on the inside... when Bucky met his eyes they were empty, and that made him feel sick. He tried to keep a lid on that though, which wasn't hard. These days there were a lot of things that made him feel sick and he'd gotten used to dealing with it. 

It was harder when there were flashes of the old Steve. And there were, very occasionally. It was often in battle but not always. Bucky would recognise that twitch of Steve's lips anywhere. He had a lot of bruises associated with that particular expression. But Steve had never been one to back away from a fight even when hopelessly outnumbered, it was like he was just born a troublemaker, destined to be fighting all the time. Bucky wasn't entirely sure that Steve was really a 20th century guy. It was seeming more likely to him that Steve really should have been a Viking or something from an era where punching people was more socially acceptable as a way to solve your problems.

Steve not acting like Steve was something that troubled Bucky on a very fundamental level. In the time he had... not been himself, a lot of things had changed. The whole world was barely recognisable in a lot of ways. Even though he'd been through a lot of the changes it was complicated by not having been in his right mind, not having been exactly exposed to a lot of culture, and also... well, looking back now it was pretty obvious to most people that the living standard in the USSR had been below the rest of the world. It didn't take much research to see that, even just looking at the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification made that obvious. 

Jarvis had shown Bucky a documentary on it one afternoon when the team had been out fighting. There had been some things Bucky found familiar. But it made him think about things even more. He seemed to spend a lot of his time thinking, and most of them were not easy thoughts to have. 

Steve had always been a constant in his life. A constant friend, a constant thorn in his side or pain in his ass, a constant rock. There were lots of constants, and those were the kinds of things he needed because regaining his identity, regaining his memories meant that everything else about Bucky's life was in flux right now and so something being consistent was important. When they had both been younger it had seemed certain to Bucky that Steve would always be Steve the way the sky would always be blue. 

But someone, somewhere in this whole mess had dropped the ball. They'd gotten it wrong. Bucky didn't know if it was the defrosting or what had happened afterwards or any of those things, but something had gone wrong and now Steve wasn't Steve anymore. It was like something inside him was broken. 

In the quiet moments, in the dead of night or when it was just the two of them or those moments when Bucky recognised the man he'd known for years, Bucky was pretty sure that Steve was fighting to get out but for once in his life... it was getting to be too much. It wasn't about losing, Steve was used to losing fights, but something like this... none of the fights they'd ever had had gone on so long and Bucky was pretty sure that inside, Steve was flagging. 

But then again, whenever a fight had been stacked against him before (so, all the time), Bucky had always had his back. He'd promised. He'd lived that promise time and again, practically had it bruised into his skin. When Steve's back was against the wall that meant Bucky would be right alongside him, fighting with him, and he wasn't about to give up now. 

So Bucky started looking for things that might help. Anything. He went back to Brooklyn, making the trip on his own to scout out old neighbourhoods and see if anyone was there. He got very good at working with Jarvis to research things. He found out the Cyclone still existed (although he was pretty sure he needed to come up with something more creative than that as revenge for Steve's payback from the first time). But high up on the list, at the top more or less, was sketching. 

Bucky wasn't sure if there was any way Steve could be persuaded to sketch again. There seemed to be an awful lot of memories lurking around and sketching would be one way of getting them out. Hell, he'd discovered from Jarvis that Stark actually owned a collection of Steve's old sketchbooks. Jarvis had been quick to reassure Bucky that Howard Stark had been the one to build up the collection and they both knew he'd been a creepy old pervert anyway so Bucky wasn't all that surprised, and also wasnt that worried about Tony. But sketching had been what had always helped out in the field. Sketching had been what had always... made it bearable. When Steve learned to sketch he didn't fight so much. Not for the hell of it anyway, there had still been plenty of bullies around. 

And so Bucky did his research and he plucked up his courage and he went out to buy a sketchbook and some supplies. There seemed to be a lot available in those terms these days. When they'd been growing up, and definitely in the field it had been difficult enough to find paper. The sketchbooks had been luxuries, reliable Christmas presents Bucky could spend the year saving up for. The medium had just been pencil. Paints were expensive and bulky and needed replacing. Pencils could last an awfully long time. 

Part of him wondered whether there were any of these new media that Steve might want to try, but that seemed to be a very personal decision and Bucky wasn't sure he was qualified to make personal decisions at all any more for this man he barely knew. 

So he bought a set of pencils and a sharpener and an eraser. The woman at the art store had talked him through the options and help him find things which were good but not overwhelming. Bucky was pretty sure that even just having the set of pencils would be exciting for Steve. He was pretty sure they'd only ever had one kind before. But that didn't matter, none of that really mattered, because what mattered was Steve and trying to help him find his way home again. Bucky knew what it looked like when Steve was lost, and... well, he was hoping that was all this was. It was easier to deal with Steve being lost than being too broken to ever come back at all. 

And Steve had been grateful for the presents. He had been, really, there'd been hugs and everything, there might even have been tears, Bucky wasn't sure. But Steve had been grateful. And to start with, Steve hadn't touched them at all. 

It was a few weeks until one night they'd had dinner together and settled on the couches. Bucky wasn't doing anything much. He'd considered reading, he'd considered learning, he'd considered cleaning and maintaining the kit he never used anymore but none of those seemed like appealing options and so he had just stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes, safe in the knowledge that Steve would wake him when or if it was time to go to bed. 

And then, with his eyes shut, he'd heard the scratching of a pencil on paper. That was a sound he'd fallen asleep to more times than he could count because when they were kids Steve had often been unable to sleep with his cough and so he'd stayed up sketching instead. Sometimes Bucky could sell them for a few extra pennies. But they'd kept loads. 

"...You drawin' me again Rogers?"

"Can't help it, the light was catching you just right. And if you move I swear to god I'll confiscate your arm."

"You want a lopsided model?"

"No not really but if a lopsided one is more cooperative than a symmetrical one then count me in."

"You're a dick, Steve."

"So you've told me many times..."

Bucky smiled to himself, despite Steve's threats and his better judgement. This was a familiar argument, albeit one they hadn't had for seventy years in one form or another. But he was comfortable with his eyes closed where he was and he wasn't planning on moving.

"Hey you sound almost like you again."

There was a long pause, but the scratching continued and Bucky held his breath, waiting to hear if he'd crossed a line. 

"...Thanks. I feel a lot more like me again. This placec almost feels like... home, having you here like this. Like nothing's changed. Except everything has but that doesn't matter outside of here."

"Mmmhmmm..." Bucky agreed with a yawn, settling down into the cushions, "That so? Well then, welcome home Steve... now shut up and let me get a nap. It's in your interests. I'll prolly move less."

"You'll snore."

"And your sarcastic ass will get over it. Shut up and leave me be."

Steve didn't reply, staring down at the paper where the familiar lines of the face opposite him were coming to life. He didn't need to. Bucky would know what the silence meant. He always had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.metrolyrics.com/battle-born-lyrics-the-killers.html


	10. Miss Atomic Bomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reminiscence about how it all started out. Steve has always been someone with something about him.

It was becoming easier to look back now. The earlier memories were coming back more clearly than the ones in the middle, which was odd. He supposed it was because they'd had longer to form the connections in his brain, longer to become entrenched no matter how many times they'd been scrambled. And he'd been in his right mind when he'd made them too. Maybe the closer he came to the person he'd once been, the easier it would be to remember all the things he was. 

These days when he looked at Steve, he saw the man as he was now, but he also saw the man Steve had been such a long time ago. It was an interesting concept, that of being a man. Bucky had the feeling that Steve always had been, really. There had always been more of Steve than should have been packed into that skinny frame, in so many ways. There was more courage, there was more conviction... Steve had a moral code, always had had, and he lived by it and died by it (or at least got bruised by it) in a way most kids didn't care about. 

Bucky thought that might have been what had drawn him to Steve in the first place. 

Of course, they'd been too young for those kinds of thoughts when they'd first met, but... it was rarely that simple. Bucky had heard about him, of course, the skinny blond who could barely breathe, whose mother was a nurse, and who seemed to spend his life getting beat up because he couldn't run away from a fight. Bucky hadn't been clear on that to start with, had thought maybe it was Steve's lungs, or polio or something like that that meant Steve literally couldn't run and the bullies took advantage.

But then he'd met the skinny little shit, fists up while blood ran from his nose and dust settled around them in a back alley, and he'd jumped in without a second thought for himself, because there was a kid who was burning bright like a flame. It was hard to resist people like that. Even back then Steve had had something about him that made him easy to follow. Most kids didn't because it was easier not to get punched and they didn't want to make friends with someone who might blow away in a stiff breeze. But Bucky wasn't most kids, and he was pretty sure when it came to Steve the serum had done just what Erskine promised and magnified stuff that was already there. That would explain where the charisma came from that everyone else seemed to find magnetic. 

When they'd grown up together it had stopped being that simple. Bucky wasn't sure exactly when he'd realised he'd fallen for Steve. It might have been fourteen or so, it might even have been younger, but that was something else that had never changed. 

He could remember those early, fumbling experiences, figuring each other out in places where they wouldn't get caught. He remembered sneaking into one of the trucks down at the depot one night to make out in private on the leather seats. He remembered being in Steve's apartment, with the radio on to drown out anything that might get heard through the paper thin walls, or back in his own home with the music on to drown out his sisters. Most of their kisses had been to the tunes of musicians he realised were still popular today. He wondered if Steve remembered the way he did. For Bucky it was like discovering all of these memories in technicolor for the first time, but Steve had never had reason to forget...

Even then, on their first ever time together hiding out in the bed of a delivery cart on a summer night when it was too stifling to be indoors, Bucky had known that he would end up moving on and leaving Steve behind. There were already rumblings of trouble in Europe, and god knows there wasn't enough money around here. Things were changing, political tides were rising, and Bucky knew that a young man like him was ripe to be sent elsewhere, wherever he was needed. But he knew that Steve wouldn't be able to follow him and there was no way he could make that parting any less bitter. 

Steve had always worn his heart on his sleeve, with his size 12 courage. Steve had always been... like some kind of avenging angel, and Buck had never doubted Steve's moral compass. But when he found him again, when he learned about the choices Steve had made... he wondered whether this filthy war was really enough to excuse the fall from grace of someone who had been the purest and most perfect man Bucky thought could ever exist. He understood, he /knew/ in his heart that Steve had never been able to back down from a fight with a bully... but he had also never dreamed that Steve would become... something completely different because he believed it was the only way to win that fight and save innocent lives that weren't even his own. 

It had felt almost like a betrayal of everything Bucky knew about him, even as Steve was rescuing him, hauling his injured ass out of the burning remains of what had been a Hydra base.

They'd been together after that, inseparable again, but it hadn't been the same. The kisses weren't the same, the touches weren't the same, no matter how hard they tried, even on the hot nights in Europe when they could sneak out of their tents and take a jeep somewhere a little more private in a facsimile of their first time. 

Bucky had wondered if it was Steve, at first. It was so easy to blame it on Steve, on the changes wrought in his friend by unseen hands that Bucky didn't trust. But he knew it wasn't that simple.

He'd been changed even then. It had been beginning, the rot setting into his system that would never go away, that would lead him down this path, changed beyond belief, almost beyond recognition, rather than dead after things that would have killed a normal man. 

It had been that first bastardised injection of the serum, the work of Zola and Red Skull himself that had turned his soul from something which had been a dirty grey at best by that stage of the war to something that was black. And even though he might have been a good Catholic boy, Bucky was pretty sure that no amount of the Lord's blood would be able to wash his soul clean any more. His hands were dirty and stained, and that was never going to fade. 

But Steve was still here, inescapable, even after all these years, all these miles, all these terrible things he had done... decades spent as barely himself, and almost as long attempting to put himself back together... There had been so many times when he knew Steve had been holding on for Bucky to come and weigh in on his side of a fight, even though he would never have admitted it and Steve would have taken on those odds just the same. But something had changed in the course of the war, and Bucky had lost count of the number of times he had waited, holding on desperately for someone to come and save him... and just like it had always been for the younger kids, the slower kids, the other kids back in Brooklyn... it had always been Steve. 

It was Steve who offered him brushes of tender touch and chaste kisses, who listened, unafraid, as Bucky tried to piece together the nightmare of his past. 

It was always Steve. Fiercer than the atomic bomb, bright and brave and brilliant, and... perfectly flawed. And Bucky wouldn't change him. Now more than ever, he wanted Steve to stay just the same as he ever was. A hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.metrolyrics.com/miss-atomic-bomb-lyrics-the-killers.html


	11. The Rising Tide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tides of war affect people in different ways. For Steve and Bucky it wound up with them both on the front line, although the paths by which they got there were very different.

When war had broken out it had felt like a golden opportunity for some young men, and it sure as hell had been spun that way. This was a chance to go to Europe, go see the world and be a hero, and stand up to a bully. This was also a way out of dead end jobs that weren't going anywhere, and a chance to get a uniform that was, they were assured, a magnet for chicks. The army would teach you to drive, teach you a trade, all kinds of things... 

Bucky had put off joining up for as long as he could though, unsure what would happen if he left Steve on his own. Of course, it wasn't much of a surprise that Steve had been the one to take them to the recruitment centre, and Bucky had been relieved in a way when he saw the 4F on Steve's papers. At least until he looked up to the look in those blue eyes. Well shit. This was just another fight to Steve, a fight against the man, to be a part of the biggeest fight of all. 

Steve had been following the war coverage since the beginning. Reading was about all he could handle some days, and when his eyes were bad it wasn't even that, but his bully senses had been tingling all over, and Bucky knew that Steve felt this was his purpose in life. He didn't give in to bullies. He fought back and he defended the righteous and the innocents, just like every body was supposed to do. And this was a fight he was going to be kept out of.

It was hard to see your best friend being eaten up inside with guilt, railing at the frail body that was keeping him prisoner even more than usual because this time he couldn't just pound his way out of it. This time he couldn't even pound his way in. But at the same time, not being in the army meant Steve would be back here and he would be safe and it was selfish but Bucky had spent years of his life watching this scrawny guy with the biggest heart of anyone he'd ever met getting the shit beat out of him because he didn't know when to turn and run. 

So on his last night he resolved to make it good. He invited a couple of dames who knew how this kind of thing went so they could all have nights without being harassed, hoping to get a night in the magic of New York after dark, the glittering kind of night that disappeared when dawn broke but would be a memory to hold on to forever. And then Steve disappeared and he'd had to leave and join up without being able to say a proper goodbye. 

***

It was desperation that had made Steve accept that offer. Well, not exactly. He was determined. He had always been determined. But this was someone offering him his dream on a plate. It wasn't even guaranteed, but it was a chance, and he'd spent his whole life with people who wouldn't give him even that. He'd show them all, but it wasn't about that. It was about doing what was right, fighting to defend the freedoms that he believed in with every fibre of his being. 

And when the time came, he signed his name on the dotted line with the barest flicker of a second thought. It was too late. This was the road he had chosen, whether it was the right or wrong one he couldn't know in advance. If it was right, he'd live, if it was wrong, then he'd never live to find out. It was a simple choice, but the benefits outweighed the risks as far as he was concerned. 

And it had worked, and he had proved himself and he could breathe and getting used to this new body which was much more representative of the man he had always been was like learning to drive a tank... except that the man who had made this possible, who had transformed his life, had been murdered in the process and now Steve was nothing more than a fluke. 

Becoming a performing monkey had been a bitter pill to swallow, but at least this way he was doing something to contribute to the war effort. The soldiers who needed it, including Bucky, were getting the money they needed to keep them safe, and then he could go to the front line and try to make them smile.

He knew he was a sacrificial lamb out here, as subject to the whims of government as he would have been in a lab. There was nowhere to hide in front of the troops and he just had to plaster a foreign feeling smile on his face and say the same old tired lines again and again, holding babies, signing autographs, filming propaganda movies... and he knew it was eating him from the inside out, but there hadn't been another option. At least not one he could stomach. 

People talked about the tides of war, and he wasn't sure which way this one was turning for the moment, but he'd been swept away with it just the same. He hadn't wanted to escape it, not like Bucky, but it had risen and it had brought him to this. Concert halls full of cheering children and laughing adults, and grim stages on the front line with men who wouldn't even look at him. Sometimes it felt like that brighter future Erskine had offered him had been a lie, although in his heart he knew that wasn't the case. If the doctor had lived, then there would have been more men like him, they would have been allowed to fight, he would have been more interesting than just a test subject. It wasn't worth shedding tears over what might have been. He just had to ignore the leaden weight in his stomach and tell himself that this was the best thing. He wasn't trained for more. He was doing well. And if he cried himself to sleep some nights in frustration and self-hatred, well, nobody had to know. It was war. A lot of people were crying themselves to sleep. 

When the news had first broken, Steve had known it would take him somewhere. He'd never dreamed that the path it would take him down would be this one. Little did he know that life was rarely that simple.

When he found out that Bucky's unit had been captured, the unit he had hoped to join, it had been the obvious decision to go looking. He couldn't imagine doing anything else. And that was when, for Steve Rogers at least, the tide began to turn a different way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/killers/therisingtide.html


	12. Heart of a Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Partway down the long road to recovery, Bucky is starting to find his feet in this new world, in his new life and in his new identity. In order to know where you're going, you have to know where you're coming from, and that's something he's finaly getting the hang of.

It was funny how music could strike a chord in your life at fundamental moments. It was also funny how the idea of music had infiltrated vocabulary so much that the idea of striking a chord meant something falling into place, something that was just... right. Bucky was adjusting to life pretty well these days, and he had become familiar with the idea of music as a defining feature of a life. A lot of people seemed to associate specific songs or bands or albums with specific times in their lives. And then there were the songs that became timeless classics, and those which were well known but of their time. 

He'd had a lot of those to catch up on. 

He was finding that he liked relating to history through the music it had produced, absorbing those messages about what had happened while he'd been... not himself. 

Jarvis had been pretty good about providing more recent suggestions. A lot had come from Clint, and even Bruce, and these days Bucky's tastes could be more or less described as eclectic. It was a nice feeling to be able to flip through them all. 

He had a record player, and a shelf, and Jarvis had managed to hunt down most of the records on vinyl. That, at least, was something familiar. 

He liked being able to touch things, to hold physical copies in his hands. Objects had a permanence to them which he'd learned not to rely on in his own memories.

He was comfortable with technology too, and Stark had equipped him with the latest MP3 player model, but... even though that had all his music on it, and was invaluable for times he wanted to go running, or he was going to therapy and needed a little headspace... when he was choosing to listen to music, he preferred to choose actively to consume it. That was contrary to a lot of things these days, but Bucky had had too long with other people deciding what was and wasn't rule, what he did and didn't get to eat, what he was allowed to feel and think and know. So he was taking control now, and part of that was /choosing/ his music, and having to do something more than just press a button to play things. 

Sometimes he liked days like this, with the sky grey outside and rain lashing at the windows. He'd built a little window bench seat, fitting it neatly into the room and upholstering it with a well stuffed cushion. He kept his records in that, organised neatly, alphabetically by artist. The record player stood in the corner, near the end of the floor-to-ceiling panes of glass. 

He sat sideways, bare feet up on the cushion, arms looped lazily around his denim-clad knees as he stared out at the world. 

It sure had changed a lot since he had gone under. It had changed a fair amount before then too but it seemed like the change had only come faster since. It was one of those feedback loops where every new discovery drove something bigger, shinier, maybe even better, and it was more than a little dizzying. 

There was a strange certainty about him now though. He had heard the term 'the world's your oyster' before. It wasn't exactly uncommon. It had never been true for people like him though, not the way it was supposed to be. Now, though, there was nobody like him. He had a whole world of opportunities, literally spread out before his feet at the moment. He could travel. He could study. He could do anything, be anything, and he had no idea where to start with any of that, but now rather than being daunting, the prospect was exhilirating. 

He wasn't defined by anybody else, he didn't have to follow orders, he could wear what he wanted, do what he wanted... and he was starting to realise from his research that there were a lot of things he wanted to do in this new life. 

He was pretty sure that in order to know where you were going, you had to know where you were from. That particular battle had already taken months, and going forward he was pretty sure it would carry on for years. But he had a starting point now. He had a name, a face, he had memories... and he had Steve. 

Steve who had promised to be with him till the end of the line, Steve who had got him into more scrapes than he cared to remember (and rarely out of them). Days and nights of screaming himself hoarse, throwing up from the nightmares, barely recognising his own name or face... and Steve had been there through it all, facing down every demon Bucky had run headlong into on this painful journey towards healing. He knew he would never, ever be okay. But he also knew now that it was okay not to be okay, and he was a lot more okay now than he had been a year or so before. 

Steve was a touchstone, and Steve Rogers was a pistol who'd face down death with his fists up if death tried to come for his best friend and Bucky knew those things as well as he knew his own heartbeat. There was no stopping the force of nature that was his best friend, and having Steve on his side had worked hugely in Bucky's favour this time around. He had never in his wildest dreams thought a promise made back in the thirties would be holding true almost ninety years later. But here they were.

And his record player turned, and Bucky found himself singing along with a song that was almost as much of a part of him now as his name, one which resonated every time he heard it, again and again. 

"Daddy daddy daddy, all my life I've been trying to find my place in this world... baby baby babe I got all night... to listen to the heart of a girl..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/killers/heartofagirl.html
> 
> And with that I have finally finished something I started almost two years ago. Wow it feels good to get that off my list! I hope you enjoy it, and I'll be doing my best to write more going forward.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to flightinflame for beta reading


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